INFJ, spoonie, Ravenclaw, probably a cylon. I'm a game industry veteran who plays lots of videogames and has lots of opinions about things.

9.20.2017

Streaming for Good and Other Scheduling Tidbits

The first of September kicked off what is almost always my busy time of year -- hence my blogging has been sporadic at best for the past couple of weeks and may or may not continue to be that way through the holidays. In the past, it was due to the extreme content push that accompanies every BlizzCon. This year, it's all stuff that I actually want to do and enjoy doing, so while I'm still unbelievably exhausted, I'm at least falling asleep with a smile on my face!

At the beginning of the month I visited my parents in Northern California and got a brief tour of the Super Evil Megacorp offices in San Mateo. If you're not familiar with the name, they're the masterminds behind the mobile-friendly MOBA Vainglory which is starting to make some serious waves in the esports scene. It was great to see a studio full of such passionate individuals and see all of the growth they're currently experiencing! They were also kind enough to give me this incredible T-shirt to commemorate my trip, so now I guess I need to get some mad Vainglory skills to replace the "free kill to all other players on the map" ones I'm currently sporting.

That trip was the first time I've traveled by myself in about a decade, a testament to exactly how far I've come in conquering the agoraphobia and anxiety caused by my CPTSD. I dealt with one flight cancellation and multiple delays without even batting an eye and now I'm afraid I've been bitten by the Adventure Bug that's making me want to hop more planes to more places.

I won't need to wait long for it, either; in a few days I'll be on a plane to Seattle, accompanying Ben on his travels to CPPCon 2017. He'll be reprising the amazing talk on constexpr magic that he gave with Jason Turner at this year's past C++Now conference in Aspen. I won't be attending the conference myself, but I'll be serving as his executive assistant, handling day-to-day details so that he can focus on C++ deliciousness instead. Since there will probably not actually be any details to handle, I'm planning to visit a few friends and explore Bellevue -- this is my first trip to the Pacific Northwest and I'm thrilled because it's a place I've always dreamed of visiting! I've already been warned about the cool temperatures and frequent rain because apparently a lot of people consider that a bad thing. Weirdos.

A week or so after we return to Southern California, we'll be hosting a couple of his family members who will be visiting from England. For some, this would be a nightmare, but I happen to adore everyone in his family, so I'm quite happily dashing around trying to make sure all of the necessary arrangements are made for a fun few days! I don't often get to see them due to the distance, so I'm excited for the chance to do so twice in one year.

Then I'm celebrating my five-year anniversary of participating in Extra Life! Extra Life is a charity gaming event benefiting Children's Miracle Network hospitals. Participants pledge to stream games for 24 hours, either all in one shot or broken up over the span of a few days, with the goal of raising funds for the CMN hospital of their choice. I'll be streaming from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Pacific time starting on Monday, October 16th and going through that Friday, which is actually almost double the 24 hour requirement, but it's for such a fantastic cause that I'm pleased to make it my full time gig for that week! The stream will happen on my Twitch channel each day, and donations can be made directly to Extra Life via my fundraising page -- only the hospital I'm supporting, All Children's Hospital in St. Petersburg, FL, will be able to touch that money. Donations are tax deductible and many employers will match the amount, so even just $5 (cheaper than a pumpkin spice latte) can do some serious good! If you're unable to donate, please feel free to share the link to my fundraising page and help me get the word out.

In case you missed the link to the fundraising page in the paragraph above, it's here.

November brings with it NaNoWriMo, which I haven't actively participated in since before I started working at Blizzard -- I just didn't have the time to devote to it. This year I'm jumping back in the saddle by writing a salacious historical romance novel so steamy that I fully expect it will bring shame to not only my family, but the families of anyone who reads it or associates personally with me. In keeping with the event's rules I haven't written a single word of it yet, but the working title is Master of the Moors, there will be scullery maids and brooding aristocratic widowers, and I'm so sorry, mom.*

Figure out some social media platform art (headers, et cetera) and a logo -- and then how to pay someone to make them for me because artists do not and should not work for free

Take a refresher course on crochet

Reopen my old Etsy store, or more than likely just create a whole new one

Flesh out some short story ideas that are kicking around

Actually self-publish my dirty book on Amazon

Maybe self-publish the short story ideas in an anthology if I get enough of them written

Complete a full-stack web development bootcamp

Put together a weekly Diablo 3 stream co-starring Ben (his request!)

Put together some sort of nice, supportive weekly gaming stream where I can focus on the community, tentatively titled A Nice Cup of Tea and a Smackdown

I'll admit that I've got a lot of ideas I'm excited to implement, and I'm always trying to figure more out -- but it's a little overwhelming at times. It's hard to focus on just one of them at a time because I want to do them all right this minute even though I know that's impossible, especially with my constantly lengthening schedule. When you're working for yourself, it's easy to get distracted and lose motivation. My hope is that by blasting it to all corners of the internet that I'm doing stuff, it'll keep me honest and on the track to eventual world domination.